It sounds like you’re advocating for the position of always following “good practices heuristics” and you’re saying “grantmakers who are on the board of another org should recuse themselves from grantmaking decisions about this other org” is one such heuristic. The first point seems uncontroversial; the second point is, in my view, open to debate.
It’s open to debate because “board membership” at most correlates with having specific conflicts of interest. What we should really be concerned about are the potentially-biasing influences themselves, like:
Does the grantmaker person have a strong financial motive to make a particular decision?
Does the grantmaker have a strong reputational motive to make a particular decision?
Does the grantmaker have a strong social motive (friendship, romance, peer pressure, etc.) to make a particular decision?
Once we learn that Claire joined EVF’s board in her role as a grantmaker, all the other ways in which “being a board member” is usually correlated with the above three potentially-biasing influences no longer apply. Learning the context in which she joined screens off these other factors. By contrast, if we knew nothing about why Claire joined the EVF board, and especially if she had joined their board before starting to work at Open Phil, then it would become hard to rule out that her board membership comes with potentially-biasing influences.
Maybe another concern is “Is the grantmaker at risk of exerting undue influence over an org” – but that depends on what we mean by “undue.” It’s also somewhat common for funders to join boards, so it’s not like this clearly violates good practices.
Overall, I think it’s quite reasonable not to be concerned about this after thinking through the specifics. The position of “it’s hubris to think through the specifics when we must avoid anything that’s even just vaguely correlated with a conflict of interest” doesn’t seem appealing to me. It also seems like “process theater” where people signal how virtuously they adhere to “good processes” without seeming to even understand or care why these processes are there in the first place. If anything, I’d find it concerning if people reasoned about things in a rigidly-rule-driven way that’s disconnected from “why might this be bad?”
I think the information about Claire’s dual role (and rationale) should have been publicly disclosed up front (was it?) . That would have been very low cost, and would send a signal that the appropriate people were keeping an eye on COI issues. Not disclosing a conflict, the waiver, and the rationale on a big grant until a grant decision is challenged in the media and by numerous forum users would not send the right message about EA’s attitude toward managing COI.
As to the merits of this one, I just can’t find a huge difference between the ultimate donor (who I assume was Dustin Moskovitz / GV) serving dual roles of sitting on the EVF board and deciding whether to fund an EVF ask, and the donor authorizing Claire to perform both roles (with oversight on the OP end) more or less on his behalf. That’s why I come back to whether the donor was aware of and approved the conflict waiver. $15MM is enough that I think that some actual donor awareness of the dual role was necessary here.
It sounds like you’re advocating for the position of always following “good practices heuristics” and you’re saying “grantmakers who are on the board of another org should recuse themselves from grantmaking decisions about this other org” is one such heuristic. The first point seems uncontroversial; the second point is, in my view, open to debate.
It’s open to debate because “board membership” at most correlates with having specific conflicts of interest. What we should really be concerned about are the potentially-biasing influences themselves, like:
Does the grantmaker person have a strong financial motive to make a particular decision?
Does the grantmaker have a strong reputational motive to make a particular decision?
Does the grantmaker have a strong social motive (friendship, romance, peer pressure, etc.) to make a particular decision?
Once we learn that Claire joined EVF’s board in her role as a grantmaker, all the other ways in which “being a board member” is usually correlated with the above three potentially-biasing influences no longer apply. Learning the context in which she joined screens off these other factors. By contrast, if we knew nothing about why Claire joined the EVF board, and especially if she had joined their board before starting to work at Open Phil, then it would become hard to rule out that her board membership comes with potentially-biasing influences.
Maybe another concern is “Is the grantmaker at risk of exerting undue influence over an org” – but that depends on what we mean by “undue.” It’s also somewhat common for funders to join boards, so it’s not like this clearly violates good practices.
Overall, I think it’s quite reasonable not to be concerned about this after thinking through the specifics. The position of “it’s hubris to think through the specifics when we must avoid anything that’s even just vaguely correlated with a conflict of interest” doesn’t seem appealing to me. It also seems like “process theater” where people signal how virtuously they adhere to “good processes” without seeming to even understand or care why these processes are there in the first place. If anything, I’d find it concerning if people reasoned about things in a rigidly-rule-driven way that’s disconnected from “why might this be bad?”
I think the information about Claire’s dual role (and rationale) should have been publicly disclosed up front (was it?) . That would have been very low cost, and would send a signal that the appropriate people were keeping an eye on COI issues. Not disclosing a conflict, the waiver, and the rationale on a big grant until a grant decision is challenged in the media and by numerous forum users would not send the right message about EA’s attitude toward managing COI.
As to the merits of this one, I just can’t find a huge difference between the ultimate donor (who I assume was Dustin Moskovitz / GV) serving dual roles of sitting on the EVF board and deciding whether to fund an EVF ask, and the donor authorizing Claire to perform both roles (with oversight on the OP end) more or less on his behalf. That’s why I come back to whether the donor was aware of and approved the conflict waiver. $15MM is enough that I think that some actual donor awareness of the dual role was necessary here.